The University of Chicago Library's web site offers online searching and viewing of 20,000 historic images in the Archival Photographic Files. All of the photographs in Series II (Buildings and Grounds), Series III (Events), and Series IV (Student Activities) are now available in the Archival Photographic Files Digital Collection. Images from Series I (Individuals and Groups), Series V (Sports), and Series VI (Yerkes Observatory) will be added to the digital collection as they are completed.
The Archival Photographic Files (the Photofiles) constitute a separate record group in the University Archives containing most of its photographic holdings. Some 60,000 in number, the photographs are arranged in five series which visually document different aspects of the University's history: Faculty, staff, and alumni; architecture and campus plans; events; student activities; and sports.
In addition to the Photofiles, there are other photographic resources in the Archives. Many archival collections include photos chronicling the family and professional lives of their subjects. Hundreds of glass lantern slides and glass plate negatives help record the first decades of the University, as does a separate collection of Eva Watson Schutze's portraits of early faculty members, their relatives, and friends. Campus architecture in the 1970s is documented in the Dreams in Stone collection of photos and negatives.
Prints and negatives have come to the University Archives from a variety of sources. Most originated in the Office of University News and Information and its public relations predecessors. Along with photographs, these transfers often included negatives and sometimes contact sheets. A substantial group of photographs, nearly all of them depicting undergraduate activities, came from the Maroon, Cap and Gown, and other student publications. Various departments, divisions, schools, and other University bodies have also contributed a significant number. Still others were acquired with archival collections or donated by alumni and friends of the University.
Individual series of the Archival Photographic Files are described below:
Photographs in this series are not yet available online.
Photographs of individuals currently or formerly affiliated with the University of Chicago, principally Trustees, administrators, faculty members, staff, donors, and alumni; photographs of academic and administrative groups associated with the University of Chicago and its predecessors and affiliates, including Old University of Chicago classes, University of Chicago academic departments, and degree-granting interdisciplinary academic committees.
All of the photographs in this series are now available in the Archival Photographic Files Digital Collection.
Photographs of buildings, campus plans, landscaping, and campus views of the University of Chicago and its predecessor and affiliate institutions; the Chicago neighborhoods of Hyde Park, Kenwood, and Woodlawn; the Hyde Park-Kenwood urban renewal project; and city parks near the campus, including Jackson Park, Washington Park, and other components of the South Parks system; selected photographs of the South Side and central areas of the city of Chicago.
All of the photographs in this series are now available in the Archival Photographic Files Digital Collection.
Photographs of academic, public, and historical events associated with the history of the University of Chicago and its predecessors and affiliates; photographs of alumni activities, academic ceremonies, exhibitions, faculty activities, inaugurations, alumni reunions, visits to campus of notable individuals, activities associated with World War I and World War II, and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.
All of the photographs in this series are now available in the Archival Photographic Files Digital Collection.
Photographs of formal and informal student activities on the University of Chicago campus, including academic classes, laboratories, and seminars; men's fraternities and women's social clubs; athletic competitions and individual sports activities in candid views; general recreational activities; academic registration and orientation programs; residence halls and housing; and theatrical groups and dramatic productions.
Photographs in this series are not yet available online.
Posed photographs of individual student athletes and posed group photographs of athletic teams of the University of Chicago and University High School; photographs representing men's and women's sports including baseball, basketball, cross-country, fencing, field hockey, football, golf, gymnastics, ice hockey, polo, soccer, swimming, tennis, track, water polo, weight-lifting, and wrestling.
Selected photographs from this series are are now available in the Archival Photographic Files Digital Collection.
Among the most significant visual materials in the Yerkes collection are more than 4,800 documentary photographs. These depict the construction of the main observatory building and the installation of instruments, the work of astronomers and staff, astronomical expeditions to sites including Sumatra and Catalina Island, and important visitors, among them Albert Einstein.
For questions about the Archival Photographic Files or any of the photographic holdings of the department, please direct your inquiry to:
